Thursday, 25 December 2014

Susan Greenfield described the mercurial nature of social media (one minute woohooing over a cute kitten pic, the next getting in a rage over some injustice) with the phrase 'yuck and wow' however it was mistranscribed as 'yakawow' spawning its own meme.

My favourite recent example of 'getting the quote wrong' might be this one, which I think I took from the Daily Mail or another tabloid newspaper. I can't remember what the story was but, knowing what the quote should be, I had quite a good giggle at this. I wonder how it happened - did the person giving the quote not know what the phrase is supposed to be, or did the person listening just summarise as best they could while not knowing the original either?

No. No no no no.

It's meant to be...

"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in."

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Comment policy: I enthusiastically welcome corrections and I entertain polite disagreement ;) Because of the nature of this blog it attracts a LOT - 5 a day at the moment - of spam comments (I write about spam practices,misleading marketing and unevidenced quackery) and so I'm more likely to post a pasted version of your comment, removing any hyperlinks.

Comments written in ALL CAPS LOCK will be deleted and I won't publish any pro-homeopathy comments, that ship has sailed I'm afraid (it's nonsense).